Chamber and committees

It is always like that. It is part of our relationship.

I will turn to Professor Leitch to answer that point, but the World Health Organization’s advice to us at this stage of the pandemic in general is to take care and not to think that everything is over and done with. The position that the Scottish Government has taken on, for example, the continued use of face coverings as a mandatory provision is in line with the guidance from the World Health Organization. The WHO will encourage us to maintain a testing infrastructure that enables us to identify what the prevalence of the virus is in our society and what we can contribute to international understanding of the virus by virtue of the information that we collect and the experience that we have.

In relation to specific measures and restrictions, the World Health Organization may set out what it thinks is desirable, but we as a Government have to judge whether that is proportionate, because we have to be satisfied that we could withstand legal challenge to any of the decisions that we take. Generally, however, the advice of the World Health Organisation at this pivotal moment of the pandemic is to take care. I turn to Professor Leitch to answer the specific question on the WHO’s testing advice.

I am again speculating, but the advice that we have received from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation will result in us issuing vaccination appointments to all five to 11-year-olds very shortly. We will start issuing them in mid-March and do most of them around the Easter holidays. Additional boosters will be provided to care home residents, people who are over 75 and people who are over 12 who are immunosuppressed. That activity will dominate the spring and the period towards the summer. That probably makes it likely that we are heading towards a booster programme in the autumn, but we will await JCVI advice on that particular question. Assuming that there is no substantive deterioration in the situation, I think that we will be moving into a period when we will be relying on vaccination to provide us with effective resilience.

We are obviously working closely with the long-standing relationships that we have with those countries to play our part responsibly to support the vaccination programmes that are under way there. As a Government, we accept the importance of fulfilling our international obligations to ensure that the whole world is protected from Covid, because only by the whole world being protected from Covid do we have as much assurance and security as it is possible to have. Our co-operation will be to that end.

We have had discussions in this committee and across Parliament on countless occasions, and Mr Rowley has consistently questioned me on the impact on people of non-Covid health harms. Those questions are absolutely legitimate, and I would be the first to acknowledge that waiting lists are larger and longer than they were before the pandemic, but that is a direct result of the pandemic.

No health board in the country wants to put off tackling those waiting lists—they want to get into a position to be able to do so as early as possible. However, we have to be mindful of the presence and prevalence of Covid. Although we have seen a fall in Covid admissions to hospitals in general over the past few weeks, Covid admissions are unfortunately rising again, to our unease, as is the number of people in hospital with Covid.

I assure the committee—this is part of the NHS recovery plan, and it is inherent in the Government’s investment in elective treatment centres—that we are anxious to expand the capacity to enable us to address the very issue that Mr Rowley fairly puts to me, so that members of the public who are suffering with pain and need a hip replacement, for example, can expect to have that treatment within a reasonable timescale.

I contend that that is what the NHS recovery plan does. It focuses entirely on the issue of making up for the treatment that has been lost because of Covid. Each health board is under an obligation, in respect of the plan that it has had to submit to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, as to how it is going to go about doing that. We are keen to ensure that we make progress as swiftly and as early as possible on advancing that treatment.

Obviously, a process is gone through to verify that payments are appropriate, but all local authorities are now making the payments. The system is active, working and making payments in all parts of the country.

Obviously, individual local authorities will work to their own pace, but we encourage them to move as quickly as possible, given that the resources are available to be distributed. I am certainly keen to encourage all local authorities to resolve any payments as quickly as possible. It is important that businesses receive payment, but it is equally important that it is appropriate for them to receive payment, so the necessary checks must be made to ensure that we are confident about the spending of public money.

There is a significant opportunity. As Mr Whittle has said, this is a moment to reset many of our attitudes in that respect.

In a moment, Professor Leitch will give a much more substantive clinical opinion than the one that I am about to give to the committee—

—given my long-standing clinical and epidemiological background. [Laughter.]

Fundamentally, the pandemic has shown us that the healthier you are, the better your chances are of weathering some form of adversity to your health. Some healthy people have been absolutely felled by Covid, but, in general, keeping yourself in a good state of health is an important prerequisite for handling any situation.

There is an opportunity to reinforce messages about our individual responsibility and opportunity to lead as healthy a life as we can. Those messages have been around for a long time, but they need to be reinforced. I know the importance of ensuring that people are physically healthy, eating well and exercising. Routine, several-times-a-day factors can be significant in the amount of weight that we carry, how we feel and how much energy we have.

If I go for a run before I start my working day, I generally have a better day, because I have looked after myself in the morning. All those things count when taken together. I know that such points will resonate with Mr Whittle—us athletes have to stick together. [Laughter.]

Mr Whittle makes a serious point about the opportunities, which links to what Mr Fairlie said about public awareness. The messaging that we provide about our health and wellbeing has to equip people with the ideas and arguments that will enable them to be as physically capable as possible of withstanding some of the issues that Covid can throw at us.

I invite Professor Leitch to add to that.

I would agree, where we can do that, but I would simply say that, to my knowledge, the Government does not run any leisure facilities in the country. We are hugely dependent on local authorities for the running of leisure facilities. I am not trying to split hairs—it is a very practical point. I encourage local authorities, in deciding their priorities, to create the opportunities for exercise events.

I can think of really good examples that I have seen in my constituency, where health professionals have gone along to lunch clubs for senior citizens and persuaded them to get involved in a wee bit of exercise, sitting in their chairs, before they have their soup and sandwiches. When health professionals have gone along to such events in the community and engaged with people in that way, those interventions have helped to strengthen mobility and to push against the frailty of some of our senior citizens.

There are simple things that can be done, and I assure Mr Whittle that the Government will be engaged in messaging about that activity and on the substance of those interventions, where we are able to do so.